Association between land use and composition of amphibian species in temperate Brazilian forest remnants

We evaluated the influence of landscape configuration on the diversity of anurans in Atlantic Forest remnants in southern Brazil. As natural habits provide better conditions for the survival of amphibians, we expected to find more diverse communities in areas with more forest cover. We sampled tadpoles in 28 breeding sites distributed in seven forest remnants. We recorded 22 anuran species and richness varied from 6 to 12 species between sites. Most of the recorded species were not forest specialists, except for Boana curupi and Crossodactylus schmidti. There was a significant overlap in the species composition between all remnants, and the Generalized Linear Mixed Model indicated that landscape use did not affect species richness. The PERMANOVA showed that forest and livestock farming explained the dissimilarity in the composition of the communities. One possible explanation for this is that the remnants are surrounded by a relatively well-preserved landscape, which offers favorable conditions for the maintenance of local populations and homogenizes species composition across the sampling sites. The lack of any strong association between tadpole species richness and land use suggests that anurans are primally affected by habitat characteristics that are detected only on a fine-scale analysis.